| -- Hiking The Kirishima Traverse -- |
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| The Kirishima Traverse is described in various hiking books as "mist-covered", so I wasn't terribly surprised to find that they are, in fact, mist-covered a lot of the time. In fact, this was one of the hike descriptions that inspired me to plan this hiking trip to Japan to begin with, so it was with high expectations that I set off by bus from Kagoshima City (fresh from my day-trip to Sakurajima) to Ebino Kogen, where the hike starts. The traverse itself is not a terribly long hike, but with all the up and down of the trail, it is a long full day of hiking, and even longer if you choose to make the trip longer by taking the last third of the traverse the same day... I decided to do the hike as a day-hike rather than lug my huge backpack and all my gear along, I planned to hike from Ebino Kogen to Takachiho-gawara and then catch the bus back to my base camp in Ebino Kogen. Ebino Kogen is a resort town high in the mountains on the Kirishima plateau. The whole area is active volcanically, which means that there are a lot of hot springs around, to which the Japanese flock for relaxation. I made a reservation at a rotemburo from the tourist office in Kagoshima. A rotemburo is an outdoor bath (for those not in the know). This particular one also offered accomodation in very basic tatami-matted rooms. Because they are very basic, you need a sleeping bag, etc. to stay there, and since there is only one place to get food in Ebino Kogen (and it closes at 5pm), provisions need to be brought along. So lugging all my stuff, plus a large bag of groceries, I made the 20 minute hike from the bus stop near the Ebino visitor's centre to the rotemburo. Upon arriving, I was told that the baths were broken, and that I could stay there, but that in order to have a hot bath (or shower), I would have to walk to the campground. (10 minutes walk on the OPPOSITE side of the visitor's centre.) To make things worse, the campground (where I was to bathe) had just happened to fill up every space they had for the weekend, so unless I wanted to spend $100 a night at the fancy hotel, the rotemburo (which I referred to thereafter as "The Rotten Burrow") was my only option for accomodation. -- It's funny how they didn't tell the girl who made the reservation that their baths were broken. I could have stayed in a campground cabin had they done so. GRRR!! Well, not being one to let a thing like a lack of hot water dissuade me, and having little choice, I decided to stay at the Rotten Burrow after all, and hike the 30 minutes to and from the campground to bathe. It was a bit of a pain in the neck to do, because after a nice soak in their onsen, you have to walk back (mostly uphill) and get sweaty again. I can deal with this, but I wouldn't want to do it all the time. Ok, enough griping. My first day in Ebino, I chose to take a crater lake hike. It's a short (3 mile or so) hike around the 3 prominent volcanic crater lakes in the area, and is a pleasant hike through rolling hills. I took the optional path of an outer loop around the furthest of the crater lakes, which goes up one of the smaller mountains (Byakushi-zan), and affords a great cross-valley view of the volcano, Karakuni-dake, which is where the Kirishima Traverse trail begins. It's a more strenuous hike that way, but the views are definitely worth it. The trail ends at the visitor's centre, where there is a hot spring bubbling up from the ground where tourists with sore feet can soak their tootsies. Since I was more or less in the area, I went to the campground onsen to have a soak before heading back to the Rotten Burrow. While I was there, I ran into the only other gaijin that I spoke to while travelling around Japan (relatives don't count), a guy about my age from Wisconsin who was teaching English in Kagoshima City and was up for the weekend with his girlfriend. I'm sure we were the only two westerners in Ebino, and we compared notes on Chicago night life while we soaked. After an hour or so, and being thoroughly relaxed, I made the return trek to the Rotten Burrow, where I found that the portable electrical generator that supplied light to our rooms had gone out, so there was no light at all after dark. GRRR. It was OK though, because I was getting up early the next morning to hike the traverse. The weather in Kyushu had thus far been pretty hot (as mentioned in my previous chapter), and I was afraid of becoming as overheated on this hike as I had been on Sakurajima, so I planned to tackle Karakuni-dake, the most strenuous climb of the trail, before the day became too hot. Waking up at 5:30am (just as the sun was starting to come up), I was off and on the trail by 6:00am. It's amazing how early one can get up if one goes to bed shortly after dark. Getting to the top of Karakuni is a steep and steady climb from Ebino. Since Ebino Kogen is already pretty high up, the climb takes about 90 minutes. I figured on 2 hours to get the top. The trail begins near the Rotten Burrow (one of the few good things about staying there), and climbs gently through a lunar landscape of hissing sulphur-scented steam vents and a small stream of steaming water before reaching the base of Karakuni. From there, the trail climbs sharply and it's a steep climb to the peak. There were few others on the trail that early, and I passed a couple hikers coming down the volcano, having climbed up during the night to see the sunrise. To my surprise, I made good time going up, and I felt pretty good about catching up to and passing other hikers on the trail, until I realized that most of them were over age 60... Still, the weather was cooperative and cool, and I actually reached the peak in the 90 minutes the guidebook had suggested. I paused for a few minutes at the top to have breakfast, and admire the view down into the valley. But after about 5 minutes, the top of Karakuni was socked in with clouds, and that was about the last time I had a very good view of anything up there. I want to mention here that I have a love/hate relationship with trail stairways on mountain sides. When ascending, I really hate them. I would rather climb an unimproved trail than climb stairs. I think it's easier that way.. and besides, I can climb stairs at home! Going down a mountain, I appreciate them more, as they make steep descents much easier and safer to navigate. Having made it to the top of Karakuni-dake unscathed, and eager for more (now that the hardest part of the trail was finished.. ho ho...), I began the descent down into the valley to get to the next peak along the traverse (Shishito-dake). Unfortunately, Kyushu had experienced a typhoon the week before I arrived, and apparently, this had deluged these mountains more than other places in Japan. Going down the trail, I quickly found where the trail had been had been transformed by the torrential rains into a very deep, very slippery, muddy rut, washing away the wooden stairs, trail markers, and a good number of trees. Following the trail here became a lot harder, since the only way to follow it was by following the rut by walking along its edge through bamboo grass, and clinging to small trees for support. After a few minutes of swinging from one small tree to another, I was beginning to feel a lot like Tarzan. Eventually, the trail ended at a large logjam of wooden stairs, a few trees, and lots of mud. It was possible then to pick out where the trail had veered off from the valley and started ascending over a small rise to the next bit of washed out trail. This was a zig-zag path down a scree slope, but enough people had hiked this way since the typhoon that I was able to pick out the trail from footprints across the loose gravel, and eventually made my way to another logjam of washed away stairs at the bottom of the valley. From there, the path started upwards again, and the trail remained in reasonably good condition for the rest of the hike. Incidentally, my hiking book said that the distance to the next peak should take 90 minutes. Due to the poor condition of the trail, it took a little more than 2 hours. What was supposed to be an easy downhill walk turned into the most physically challenging part of the whole traverse. The next peak, Shishito-dake, is nothing special, and the view was still pretty bad (not much to see inside clouds), so I simply passed through without stopping. The next bit of trail is another valley, including tight paths that involve wading through through dense bamboo grass and wild azalea bushes (my pants were soaked through from the dew on the bushes on this stretch). This is a ridge walk, but it's impossible to really make out the ridge very clearly through the growth. Overall, though, this climb is not as steep as the first, and it wasn't long before I was climbing the slopes of Shinmoe-dake. Shinmoe-dake is most impressive. Karakuni is the highest point of the trail, but Shinmoe-dake is the most beautiful part. You make a fairly steep climb up from the azalea jungle and suddenly reach a beautiful razorpoint ridge trail that skirts the open crater, complete with a bright green crater lake of steaming water. Steam vents on the sides of the crater make the whole area smell of sulphur, coloring the crater with patches of yellow, and you can see steam rising up from the whole area. Shinmoe-dake is still active, and this is a very cool place to sit and rest and ponder plate tetonics and volcanism. I must've sat up there for 15 minutes before continuing on to Naka-dake. The descent from Shinmoe-dake is a well-maintained boardwalk. A lot of hikers who come on the traverse from the opposite direction turn back at Shinmoe-dake and return to a nearby village on a side trail. Therefore, the trail here is fancy, and your feet never touch the ground until after the turnoff to the village. The trail here didn't seem to have been affected at all by the typhoons. It's also a fairly boring section of trail after the beauty of the volcanic crater, but before you know it, it's time to climb again. The next peak, Naka-dake, isn't the most impressive mountain, and the trail up is pretty gentle. Once you reach the top, there are interpretive signs,. and on clear days, you get a stunning vista of the entire Kirishima plateau in all directions. Unfortunately, the Mountain Scenery Gods again had other plans for me, and Naka-dake was enclosed in cloud. I was hoping to get a good view from here to the next peak, Takachiho-dake. Takachiho is, according to Japanese tradition, the mountain peak where the god Izanagi-no-mikoto thrust his sword into the ground, and pulled the islands of Japan up from the ocean floor. Therefore, this site is particularly important in Japanese folklore, and particularly to Izanagi's descendants, the Imperial family. There is an important shrine here that's dedicated to him. Alas, I never did get a good view of the peak of Takachiho, although by this point, the weather had cleared a little, and I could see the lower slopes of the mountain. The climb down Naka-dake is quite steep, and much of it is over sharp volcanic rock. This was one place where I was happy to have stairs, although there weren't very many, and one is forced to climb down over boulders and even do a little bit of scrambling to get down. Here, you need to keep your eyes on the trail and watch where you put your feet, lest a loose rock send you down the mountain side, or worse, send loose rocks bouncing down the trail to the next hiker. Nonetheless, there were a fair number of people climbing up from Takachiho-gawara. Once you reach the base of Naka-dake, the trail splits into 3 paths (they all go to the same place), and you descend gently down below the treeline through the forest on mossy cobblestone trails. This area looks to be landscaped and you find benches and picnic tables here, along with the omnipresent Japanese tourists come to see Takachiho. At the bottom is the village of Takachiho-gawara, where there is a visitor's centre, vending machines, and you can catch a bus back to Kagoshima City (west) or Miyazaki (east). From the village, I also got my best view yet of Takachiho-dake, although after some deliberation, I chose not to climb up. The trail continues up Takachiho, and over the other side, where it gently descends to Mi-ike (a large crater lake) and the village of Haragawa. The main reason I decided not to continue over Takachiho was because by the time I would have reached Haragawa, there would have been no more buses to get me back to the Rotten Burrow. Therefore, I chose to stick around there for awhile. Besides, my feet were complaining. All told, it took me about 7 hours to hike from Ebino Kogen. Pretty good time, actually, considering the condition of the trail, my general fitness level, and the fact that I was hiking inside clouds most of the time. In the end, I decided not to wait for the bus. It was a few hours off yet, and so I splurged on a 3500 yen (roughly 32 USD) taxi ride back to Ebino Kogen, where I had a nice soak in the onsen at the campground before heading back to my lair at the Rotten Burrow. At this point, I was confident that I wouldn't be making any more major hikes on the trip because of time constraints, but I've definitely decided to return to Kirishima someday, this time with a tent, and hopefully stay at a rotemburo that works! |